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Category: Research

Funding Universities’ Research Role

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a series of pieces looking at the economics of teaching loads; specifically, I was focussed on the relationship between per-student funding and the teaching loads required to make universities self-sustaining.  I had a number of people write to me saying, in effect, “what about research?” Good question. The quick answer is that in provinces with explicit enrolment-driven funding formula (e.g. Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia), governments are not in fact paying universities to do

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February 9, 2015 1 Comment

The Case of Southwestern Ontario

Yesterday I talked about ways universities can generate economic growth, and I promised to offer an example from Southwestern Ontario. Southwestern Ontario has been in the news a lot recently due to its deteriorating economy, not least through the efforts of Western professor Mike Moffatt.  More recently, the Globe’s Adam Radwanski penned a feature article on what southwestern Ontario can learn from such economic revivals as has happened in the US rust belt. Radwanski’s argument is a long one, but the bit

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January 30, 2015 1 Comment

Universities and Economic Growth

If you read the OECD/World Bank playbook on higher education, it’s all very simple.  If you raise investments into higher education and research, growth will follow. At the big-picture national level, this is probably true.  But it’s maddeningly inspecific.  What is the actual mechanism by which higher spending on a set of institutions translates into growth?  Is it the number of trained graduates produced?  Is it the quality or type of education they receive?  Does concentrating research in certain areas

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January 29, 2015 4 Comments

Adult Discussions About Research Policy

Over the winter break, the Toronto Star published an editorial on research funding that deserves to be taken out to the woodshed and clobbered. The editorial comes in two parts. The first is a reflection on whether or not the Harper government is a “caveman” or just “incompetent” when it comes to science. I suppose it’s progress that the Star gives two options, but frankly the Harper record on science isn’t hard to decode: The Conservatives like “Big Science” and have

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January 6, 2015 1 Comment

Massachusetts, Not Michigan

TD economist Ed Clark gave an enormously important talk last week, which deserves a lot of attention.  You can get the gist of it from two quotes: “To return to the path to prosperity, Canada needs to stop wasting time worrying about how to get low-wage jobs back from the U.S. or abroad and start thinking about how to use our well-educated population, immigration policies and public health care to our advantage”. “Stop competing with Michigan. Start competing with Massachusetts”.

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December 8, 2014 1 Comment

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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